Spirit Talk Show - Bedtime Stories for Grown Ups

What happens after the uniform comes off? In this powerful episode of Spirit Talk Show: Bedtime Stories for Grown-Ups, Doyle sits down with Anthony Dyer (@anthonyp_dyer), retired U.S. Air Force Combat Special Missions Aviator and author of Moonchild: The Roots and Wings of a U.S. Air Force Combat Special Missions Aviator. Get Anthony’s book here: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61574988895222&rdid=IRECmVci4wFNneNr&share_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fshare%2F18633mg8py%2F# Raised in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, Anthony learned early that strength was quiet and endurance was inherited. The mountains gave him roots. The Air Force gave him wings. Over 21 years of service — including flying on AC-130 gunships and HH-60 Pave Hawk rescue helicopters — Anthony carried the unseen weight of combat missions, life-and-death decisions, and the emotional toll of war. When retirement stripped away his military identity, he faced a different kind of battle: loss of purpose, PTSD, alcoholism, and the quiet spiral many veterans endure alone. In this conversation, Anthony speaks openly about: Combat aviation and special operations missions The emotional cost of military service PTSD, loss of identity, and “taking a tactical knee” The stigma around mental health in the military Replacing drinking with writing How storytelling became survival Moonchild isn’t a war memoir filled with spectacle. It’s a witness account — honest, disciplined, and deeply human — about what service members carry home long after deployment ends. This episode explores resilience without bravado. Strength without silence. And what it means to truly land after living at altitude for two decades. If you’ve ever struggled with identity after a major life transition… If you love someone who has served… If you’ve carried weight quietly for too long… This conversation is for you. Some people fly missions. Some people write about them. And some turn their lived experience into a bridge so others don’t feel alone. Spirit Talk Show – Bedtime Stories for Grown-Ups Hosted by Doyle Follow Spirit Talk Show on social media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/spirittalkshow Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doylespirittalkshow/ X: https://x.com/doylespirittalk  Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/spirittalkshow  www.spirittalkshow.info  If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, rate, and share it with someone who might need it. Sponsored by Incogni — they remove your personal data from broker sites automatically so strangers cannot buy your information. Get protected: https://deal.incogni.io/spirittalkshow 

She begins every gathering in silence. Then she sings before she speaks. And I keep thinking about that, because it tells you everything you need to know about how Soreya James understands people. She knows that the truest things do not arrive through argument. They arrive through resonance. Through something in one human being that calls to something in another, underneath all the words. Soreya James is a Kundalini yoga teacher, dance therapist, breathwork practitioner, and retreat facilitator with over twenty years of experience working with women in the deepest places a person can go. She has overcome addiction, depression, and psychosis. She has been publicly cancelled in a way that went viral worldwide. She has been called a cult leader by people who had never been in a room with her. And she kept going. Not because she had no other choice — but because she understood something about transformation that most people spend their whole lives trying to avoid. It asks for everything. In this episode, Soreya walks us through what she means by metamorphosis — not self-improvement, not a better version of who you already were, but a complete dissolution and becoming. She talks about what it means to stop being what happened to you, why traditional therapy can sometimes hold people inside the very story they are trying to leave, what sits in the cellular body across seven generations of ancestry, and why the first step toward grace only needs to be one step. She also reads live from Metamorphosis — her digital book and immersive experience woven with music, meditation, and breathwork — and what she reads will stay with you. Find Soreya and her work at https://soreyajames.com/  Spirit Talk Show – Bedtime Stories for Grown-Ups Hosted by Doyle Follow Spirit Talk Show on social media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/spirittalkshow Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doylespirittalkshow/ X: https://x.com/doylespirittalk  Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/spirittalkshow  www.spirittalkshow.info  If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, rate, and share it with someone who might need it. Sponsored by Incogni — they remove your personal data from broker sites automatically so strangers cannot buy your information. Get protected: https://deal.incogni.io/spirittalkshow 

In 1987, Xavier Nuez walked into a job interview, was asked his name, and his brain snapped. Not metaphorically. His nervous system broke down in the chair, and he has never been exactly the same since. He lost his friends, his confidence, his artistic vision, and very nearly his future. He moved back in with his parents. He became afraid of the most loving people in his life. He came close — closer than he will tell you quickly — to being the man he later found buried in a fifteen-inch gap between two buildings, wearing shredded pants, no shirt, eyes meeting his for one second in a flashlight beam before Xavier turned it off and walked away knowing exactly who that man was. What saved him was an alley. Six years after the crash, he picked up a camera one night, walked into the dark part of town where no one goes at two in the morning, stepped into a forgotten alley, and immediately became calm. The darkness was a warm healing blanket. The city sounds went quiet. He set up his lights and spent the next ninety minutes alone in a place the world had decided did not count — and lit it up like the inside of a church. He did that for 25 years. 1,200 nights. Gangs surrounded him. Guns were pointed at him. Police questioned him repeatedly. None of it stopped him, because his psychological terror had been replaced by physical danger, and that was a trade he was willing to make every single time. What he didn't understand until much later was that every dark corner he transformed into something beautiful was him rewriting his own story. The monster he thought he was fighting turned out to be a frightened little boy who had been trying to protect him all along. His book Alleys and Ruins is two books in one — a memoir told in a quiet, intimate voice, and a set of adventure stories told in a voice you will not recognize as the same man. The photography alone is worth the price of admission. The Motor City shot. The compactor. The Toronto alley where everything changed. Find Xavier and Alleys and Ruins at https://www.nuez.com/alleys-and-ruins-press Spirit Talk Show – Bedtime Stories for Grown-Ups Hosted by Doyle Follow Spirit Talk Show on social media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/spirittalkshow Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doylespirittalkshow/ X: https://x.com/doylespirittalk  Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/spirittalkshow  www.spirittalkshow.info  If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, rate, and share it with someone who might need it. Sponsored by Incogni — they remove your personal data from broker sites automatically so strangers cannot buy your information. Get protected: https://deal.incogni.io/spirittalkshow 

What if the bravest chapter of your life begins after everyone assumes your story is already written? In this episode of Spirit Talk Show: Bedtime Stories for Grown-Ups, Doyle welcomes author Lee Ann Walling, a journalist, political strategist, church musician, and lifelong storyteller who published her first novel at the age of 69. After decades shaping public policy, writing speeches, and helping communities tell their stories, Lee Ann finally turned inward and wrote her own. Her novel, The Salt and Light Express, follows Chris—an older woman traveling west in a small RV to scatter the ashes of her longtime partner at Bryce Canyon. Along the way, grief collides with faith, prejudice meets compassion, and unexpected friendships reshape what healing can look like. In this heartfelt conversation, Lee Ann reflects on reinvention later in life, the courage to write after decades in other careers, spiritual searching, and why it’s never too late to begin again. The discussion touches on grief, LGBTQ love, silent retreats, journalism ethics, and the strange beauty of the American West. Along the way, Lee Ann reads from the opening of her novel, sharing the story of a woman learning—sometimes awkwardly, sometimes painfully—how to live again after loss. If you’ve ever wondered whether creativity, love, or purpose has an expiration date, this episode offers a hopeful answer: it doesn’t. Because sometimes the road west isn’t about escaping the past. It’s about discovering the next right thing. Learn more about Lee Ann Walling and her work: https://www.leeannwalling.com/ Spirit Talk Show – Bedtime Stories for Grown-Ups Hosted by Doyle Follow Spirit Talk Show on social media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/spirittalkshow Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doylespirittalkshow/ X: https://x.com/doylespirittalk  Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/spirittalkshow  www.spirittalkshow.info  If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, rate, and share it with someone who might need it. Sponsored by Incogni — they remove your personal data from broker sites automatically so strangers cannot buy your information. Get protected: https://deal.incogni.io/spirittalkshow 

The goal is not to fix yourself. That one idea sits underneath everything Kristan Swan does. Most of what we are handed about self-work assumes something is broken and needs repairing. Kristan starts somewhere else — with understanding yourself more honestly, and with more compassion than you would usually allow. In this episode of Spirit Talk Show, Doyle sits down with Kristan to talk about self-discovery, journaling, healing, and what it really means to come home to yourself. Kristan shares the story behind her journaling practices, Spaghetti on the Wall and Heart Mapping, and how creative reflection helps people move past shame, inherited expectations, and the pressure to keep performing a life that no longer feels true. Together, they explore the stories we inherit from family, culture, marriage, faith, and fear — and how those stories shape us without our ever noticing. Kristan talks about learning to listen inward, and about building rooms where people can finally tell the truth about their own lives. This is a conversation about identity, belonging, vulnerability, and the courage it takes to ask: who am I beneath all the roles, expectations, and noise? A warm, reflective episode for anyone feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or ready to begin again. Learn more about Kristan Swan: https://kristanswan.com/ Spirit Talk Show – Bedtime Stories for Grown-Ups Hosted by Doyle Follow Spirit Talk Show on social media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/spirittalkshow Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doylespirittalkshow/ X: https://x.com/doylespirittalk  Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/spirittalkshow  www.spirittalkshow.info  If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, rate, and share it with someone who might need it. Sponsored by Incogni — they remove your personal data from broker sites automatically so strangers cannot buy your information. Get protected: https://deal.incogni.io/spirittalkshow